Anyone got a Tamiya Grasshopper?

Inspired by this and the earlier threads, I've now got a NiCad on charge and cleaned out all the dead cells and leaked acid from a transmitter. Give me 20 minutes, and it'll (hopefully) be the first time my Madcap's run in about two decades.

Given that I've just found my guide book and tallied it up with the list here, the car's 1993 vintage so "two decades" is pretty much on the money.

Because it always cornered like a bag of nails, I bought a hop-up suspension kit from eBay a couple of years back. Fitted the new shocks but at the time couldn't find the bag with all the controllers and gubbins in. I'm suddenly quite excited about this, juts hope the NiCad isn't deader than tank tops.

This thread's bringing back some memories. Raced RC cars from the age of ten up to about 19. In chronological order: Tamiya Falcon, Kyosho Ultima, Kyosho Lazer, Traxxas TRX1, Losi XX. The Ultima was probably my favourite

I'd love to do it these days, but too pricey and time consuming to do it in addition to MTBing

I had a Grasshopper for a bit, theyr'e good fun, you get the good dad&son vibe from building them too. Incidentally, they'e basically a more basic Hornet, different rear suspension, ABS shell and a 380 motor.
You can pick up all the Hornet parts on Ebay cheap enough, so you get to build the basic model, then all the fun of shopping for speed and better bounce! I say, get it!

I used to love mine, me and a friend used to do demolition derbys in the school playground. Run what you brung and the Mini's would destroy everyone- lots of Tamiya casualites
They cost £40 and you could fix them with bits of circuit board nicked out of CDT class

mrblobby - Member
I'm 110% that this RC10 Classic would be rubbish and that this one would be about as much fun as watching paint dry.
Oh my, those do look good. Blobby Jr only 15 months... too young to use as an excuse?

What I mean by "that's how it start's" and the expense is you start off with a £150 car and end up racing nationals where the sponsored pro's run a new set of wheels and tyres for every heat at £40-50 a pop.
I ended up running Nitro 1 1/8 truggy and buggies probably at a rough cost of £1200 (x3) per car with upgrades every year and £50-100 on parts, fuel etc per race not to mention £1500 of other stuff like chargers, starter boxes, glow starters, batteries, tools, spares, radio's etc.
Racing offroad outdoors all seasons also creates more wear and tear.
But it is extremely addictive, nothing like a race start with 12 cars revving their nuts out at 28000 rpm just before the flag drop (sends shivers down my spine just in recollection )

I would recommend looking at 1 1/18 micro cars as a very fun cost effective start up solution. You may even be able to get one each for your budget.
You can run them in doors (there were clubs about based in sports halls) or on smoothish surface outdoors.
Please find a link to a micro car forum which has loads of information.
From experience the FTX Blaze was a favoured a few years ago running well out of the box but with reasonable upgrades available.
The Associated was ok but a bit fragile especially on the steering linkage.
The Losi micro 8 looks interesting if its as good as its bigger brothers that I ran before jacking it in.
Enjoy and start looking at getting a second mortgage